Online tools

Last week I posted about how crowdfunding initiatives have been facing headwind in Finland owing much to the helplessness of authorities, who seem paralysed when coming into contact with new ways of harnessing the internet. Our series of Fact Cards have showcased some of the interesting examples globally. These projects usually take the form of [...] Read more – ‘What can government learn from crowdsourcing? 1/2’.

Previously on Brickstarter: our project is about sketching new cultures of public decision-making, predicated on reversing NIMBY cultures to become YIMBY cultures. We’re creating a platform for making suggestions about how to improve your neighbourhood or environment, and then turn those proposals into projects. We do this in order to start constructive conversations within and [...] Read more – ‘Brickstarter prototype v0.1, and using sketches to ask questions’.

I’ve responded to a recent post entitled “Against Kickstarter Urbanism” by Alexandra Lange over at Design Observer and the response is included in full below. Before getting into that, however, I wanted to propose that “kickstarter urbanism” is not a thing, really. What Lange writes about is not a site enabling or creating a movement so [...] Read more – ‘For Involved Urbanism’.

“Democracy was a curiosity of a couple of Greek city-states where the decision-making polity could turn out in one place all together. It only became a generally workable system, at population-scale, after print. So my conclusion is that when communications tools lead to radical increases in the number of producers of media (not just the [...] Read more – ‘A curiosity of a couple of Greek city-states’.

Archie (middle) and Dong-Ping (right). Source: pluspool.org On a sunny Manhattan morning I met Archie Lee Coates IV and Dong-Ping Wong to discuss +Pool, their attempt to crowdfund a public pool in the East River that we’ve previously discussed on this site. Two years into the project, Archie and Dong-Ping are still energized by the [...] Read more – ‘Interview with +Pool’.

Last time we looked at the +Pool to begin dissecting what exactly crowdfunding is actually paying for when we see capital projects appearing on Kickstarter. In that case, the funding was directed at a feasibility study and mockup, but Spacehive is a site dedicated to crowdfunding capital investments—community centers, gardens, bits of infrastructure, etc. As they [...] Read more – ‘Building with more than money’.

As the interest in crowdfunding for local projects continues to grow, we’re digging into the nitty gritty of what this actually implies. What is really being funded and what’s the extent of the community participating? The reality of a capital project such as a building or bit of infrastructure is that it’s not going to [...] Read more – ‘Pools are Expensive (thoughts about the long tail and crowdfunding)’.

A quick dive into Liquid Democracy. Before we begin, I’d like to note that this is a term without a Wikipedia entry—a rare thing these days. However, you can read a basic overview on CommunityWiki and the Wikipedia page on Proxy Voting is also informative. It’s an idea of technologically-supported direct democracy that seems to have arisen within [...] Read more – ‘Liquid Democracy’.